What comes to mind when you bite into a Lay’s® potato chip?
Do you think:
Mmmm, crunchycrispysaltyfatty junkfood goodness — I wonder how many calories are in these? I really should
put this bag down now.

Or do you think:
Wow,
just three ingredients! And the potatoes were grown by a fourth-generation
family farmer near me. 

Frito-Lay, the $13 billion business unit of PepsiCo, is
spending millions to try and drive home the latter message, and I haven’t the faintest
clue why.

A few days ago, the corporation announced in a press release
that it was “Bringing the
Simple Happiness of Farm Life to Big Cities Across America”
with a mobile greenhouse exhibit:

Visitors to the “Lay’s Mobile Farm,” a 70-foot
long, 10-foot wide and 14-foot high traveling greenhouse will have an
opportunity to interact first-hand with plants, meet a Lay’s potato farmer and
enjoy interactive stations. Families will also receive take-home educational
materials that provide simple tips and fun activities to inspire at-home
gardening.  

To help get more gardens growing, the Lay’s brand will give
away approximately 8,000 individual basil plants to people who participate in
the farm experience. And, at the culmination of each city stop, the brand
will donate all contents of the greenhouse to local community gardens,
resulting in the planting of hundreds of vegetables and fruits in these urban
areas.

I don’t know about you, but I can definitely use some more simple happiness in my busy urban existence.

Now, Lay’s must be getting its money worth from the four PR/advertising
firms it’s hired to drive this and last year’s campaign, which connected the
potatoes in the chips to seven American farmers whose families have grown for
the company since 1974. Although Grist’s Tom Philpott wrote last
year that “Ultimately, I suspect such promotions will fade away …
Marketing schemes that fail to fool quickly skulk into obscurity,” these
localwashing campaigns must be getting some traction, or else Frito-Lay
wouldn’t keep pumping big bucks into them.

They’re hitting all the right notes to get the food
movement singing along: supporting local farmers, eating foods made from recognizable
ingredients (Michael Pollan’s grandmother would certainly recognize a potato
chip), promoting “know your farmer” through a “chip tracker” feature,
and now, encouraging people to grow some of their own food by giving away basil
plants and supporting community gardens.